Field
The present application relates to the field of computer technologies, and in particular, to a method and system for facilitating terminal identifiers to manage security among networked devices.
Related Art
A terminal identifier is a unique identifier assigned to a terminal device (e.g., a mobile phone or a computer) and used for distinguishing the terminal from other terminals. Proper equipment identification is important to network security.
Typically, when a user operates a terminal over a network, a security server may monitor and analyze user behavior such as service requests from the terminal. By analyzing the user behavior, the server can determine the strength of the association between the user and the terminal, and determine whether the user is likely to be authorized to use that terminal. The server may then take appropriate measures to manage the risk associated with the user operating the terminal. Therefore, it is important for the server to properly identify the terminal devices in the network.
Conventional approaches generally use information from a single piece of equipment of a terminal device as the identifier for the terminal. For example, one may use a media access control (MAC) address of a computer as the identifier of the computer, or an international mobile equipment identity (IMEI) of a mobile phone as the identifier for the mobile phone. However, using information from a single piece of equipment as the identifier for the terminal has a number of shortcomings. For example, access to equipment information of the terminal may be limited to those with access rights. When access to such information is limited, it may be difficult or impossible to determine the identifier for the terminal. As a result, a security server cannot identify user behavior associated with the terminal, and therefore cannot determine whether the user is an authorized user.